DeviceVM's Splashtop on ASUS Motherboards

It looks like Linux may solve the "drat, I have to boot my computer to check my email" problem once and for all. The solution is DeviceVM's Splashtop, a Linux-based, 'instant-on' solution that offers users Internet access just seconds after turning on their PC. The latest news regarding Splashtop is that the world's largest motherboard manufacturer, ASUS, will gradually integrate the application into all of its motherboards. ASUS ships over 1 million motherboards per month. Today Splashtop is featured on ASUS' P5Q motherboard family. ASUS brands Splashtop "Express Gate" to its users. DeviceVM seeks to collaborate with other manufacturers to have Splashtop on PCs of other manufacturers, as well.

Adobe Flash Player 10 Public Beta

Love or hate Adobe Flash, we're fortunate to the option to use it on the Linux platform - now Version 10 beta release, code named "Astro". In the latest release, Adobe touts new "expressive features for interactive designers and developers to build richer and more immersive Web experiences". Some new advancements include: inclusion of custom filters and effects from Adobe Pixel Bender; a new, highly flexible text engine; ability to render SWF content via the GPU processor; improved 3D effects and more. Innovations of Adobe Flash Player 10 beta will be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR and will contribute to future work on the Open Screen Project, which is dedicated to delivering a consistent runtime environment across personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The application is available for free download from Adobe's Web site.

The Book of IMAP by Peter Heinlein & Peer Hartleben (No Starch Press)

Because the IMAP email protocol can be more difficult to implement and trickier than POP3, No Starch Press authors Peter Heinlein & Peer Hartleben have created the new The Book of IMAP to make it easier for everyone to use. The book introduces not only IMAP and POP3 but it also covers all aspects of the two most popular open-source mail systems, Courier and Cyrus. Authors Heinlein and Hartleben have set up hundreds of mail servers and offer practical hints about troubleshooting errors, migration, filesystem tuning, cluster setups, and password security that will help readers extricate themselves from all sorts of tricky situations. Readers also learn how to use built-in tools for server analysis, maintenance, and repairs; manage shared folders, virtual domains, and user quotas; authenticate user data; handle heavy traffic with load balancers and proxies; implement complementary Web-mail clients and utilize the Sieve email filter.

Linux Game Publishing and Ascaron Entertainment's Sacred Gold

It is amazing how many Linux-based games I am now able to announce. The latest is Ascaron Entertainment's Sacred Gold, which includes Sacred and its expansion Sacred: Underworld. Linux Game Publishing is responsible for the Linux port. The companies state that Sacred is an action role-playing game, combining an exciting storyline with great gameplay". The expected release date is early August, 2008.

The new book Deploying Rails Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide by Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Bruce Tate & Clinton Begin was written because the "information needed to deploy a Ruby on Rails application in a production environment has been fragmented and contradictory" says publisher Pragmatic Bookshelf. Readers will learn: everything from source control and migrations to Capistrano, rake tasks and beyond; how to deploy applications to multiple production servers with a single command using Capistrano; how to setup a Rails/Nginx/Mongrel cluster for applications with high scalabilty needs and how to take a killer app from production to deployment.

Adaptec's Series 2 Unified Serial RAID Controller Family

The Adaptec team recently announced Series 2, a new family of entry-level Unified Serial RAID controllers that "eliminates the limitations of software RAID-based hardware solutions commonly found in entry-level systems", says Adaptec. The new low-profile Series 2 RAID controllers are built on the same dual core RAID-on-Chip (ROC) architecture used in Adaptec's Series 5 RAID controllers. The product line is also 'plug and play' compatible with Linux drivers 2.4.2 or later. The Series 2 controllers are fully compatible with more than 300 SATA/SAS devices, including midplanes, disk and tape drives.